Fort Worth’s 2025 budget could halve funds for improving neglected neighborhoods

Only a year after expanding its popular neighborhood improvement program, the city of Fort Worth is considering rolling back that expansion.

City Manager David Cooke told the City Council during an Aug. 27 budget work session that in order to keep the tax rate frozen while meeting council’s expectations, cuts from programs supported by the general fund and-pay-as-you-go funds are necessary. 

Among those cuts: reverting back to a one-neighborhood-a-year strategy for the Neighborhood Improvement Program, which had expanded to two in fiscal year 2024. The program sends funds to neighborhoods that have been historically neglected such as Las Vegas Trail and Ash Crescent. 

“I would be very apprehensive on cutting the funding knowing that plan has just gotten started,” District 6 council member Jared Williams said.

The proposed budget amendment comes days after Mayor Mattie Parker and the rest of council requested that the city’s tax rate remain below the no-new-revenue rate and stay flat at 67.25 cents per $100 valuation. The council sent a joint letter to Cooke on Aug. 23, detailing concerns about his original budget proposal for the 2025 fiscal year, which included raising the city’s tax rate for the first time since 1995. 

Council requested that Cooke amend his proposal to keep the tax rate flat and raise the city’s minimum wage to $18 per hour, while continuing to prioritize public safety and street maintenance efforts. 

Halving the city’s investment in the Neighborhood Improvement Program would generate $4.2 million in savings, Cooke said. Those savings would enable the city to invest a total of $10 million into the city’s street maintenance fund to meet council’s communicated priority of addressing aging streets. 

Cooke also advised eliminating 10 to15 vacant city staff positions, cutting back vehicle and equipment replacement funding and increasing salary savings. Those amendments, coupled with the Neighborhood Improvement Program change, would result in a combined $6.2 million in savings. 

Cutting funding could have lasting effects, city manager says

The Neighborhood Improvement Program was launched in 2017, with the goal of improving an area’s vitality through capital improvements.

Neighborhoods are chosen for the program based on financial hardship, opportunities and current conditions in the area. Improvements in those neighborhoods have included new or repaired sidewalks, streetlights and roads, local park updates and police cameras.

Since its inception, the Neighborhood Improvement Program has targeted nine neighborhoods. Council members across the dais have enthusiastically praised the program and applauded Cooke’s effort to reinvest in long-neglected parts of the city. 

In 2023, City Council approved the expansion of the program, increasing each year’s neighborhood participation from one to two. That year, the Seminary and Worth Heights neighborhoods were selected for investment.

City Council has steadily increased funding to the program year-over-year since its inception, but Cooke said staff have been unable to spend those funds in a timely manner. 

Staff are expected to spend the allocated funds for each neighborhood within a two-year time frame. Of the nine neighborhoods involved in the program so far, four have missed that deadline, and only two have fully spent their allotted funds. Overall, only 57% of the program’s funds have been spent. 

“We are at a point where, I won’t say we’re challenged, but we’re challenged in our ability to spend that money at a faster pace,” Cooke said at the budget work session. “We have to catch up on these other neighborhoods as we talk about what neighborhoods we add in the upcoming fiscal year.” 

Council members around the table expressed surprise and disappointment over the numbers. District 5 council member Gyna Bivens said it may indicate that city management needs to do more work to engage neighborhood residents and get work done.

“I’m just shocked to see money not spent,” Bivens said. 

Cooke attributed the spending challenges partially to “high turnover” in the neighborhood services department but didn’t offer other reasoning. The department’s former director, Victor Turner, resigned at the end of April amid an HR investigation. In August, the city named Kacey Bess as the department’s new director; she had filled the role in an interim capacity since Turner’s resignation. 

Bess said she has concerns about cutting funding to the Neighborhood Improvement Program but added that the cutback could help address spending issues. 

“Obviously, I would want to keep funding for two (neighborhoods), but there is some value in reducing it to one,” Bess said. “It would allow us to catch up on some of these projects that we still have funding outstanding, and to really just go hard in terms of getting those completed.”

She said the city plans to hire a consultant to help execute improvements. She hopes the city can go back to funding two neighborhoods per year in the 2026 fiscal year. 

Council members expressed varied opinions on the proposal to cut funding to the program but appeared open to the idea. Williams suggested continuing to invest in two neighborhoods per year, but with lower allocations for each. Council member Charlie Lauersdorf said the council could approve cutting the program to one neighborhood per year with the intention of spending any unused revenue at the end of the fiscal year on a second neighborhood. 

Throughout the budget meeting, Cooke cautioned the council against approving budget changes without considering long-term ramifications. 

Cooke previously said the property tax increase, which would fuel a $1.062 billion general fund budget, was necessary to cover an unexpected drop in property value growth and increased costs for police and fire, performance pay increases, pay-as-you-go fund increases and the switch from MedStar to a fire-based EMS system.

“We will still have a challenge when you think about the next couple of years. All we were trying to show here is the decisions that we make this year have a lasting effect,” Cooke told council Tuesday. “There’s still challenges out there that will require fiscal discipline, fiscal stewardship as we talk about not only this year’s budget but the budgets in the future.” 

City Council is scheduled to meet for two more budget work sessions, on Sept. 5 and 6. They will hold a public hearing to gather resident input on the proposed tax rate Sept. 17 before voting on the final budget and tax rate the same day. 

Cecilia Lenzen and Emily Wolf are government accountability reporters for the Fort Worth Report. Contact them at cecilia.lenzen@fortworthreport.org and emily.wolf@fortworthreport.org. 

At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.

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